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ISSUES | |
INTERIORS ARCHIVE:
529: Trend spotting
Trina O'Hara takes us on a tour of international furniture fairs to find
the top Japanese designers at work today.
521: Child's play
Trina O'Hara checks out the design celebrities hatching playful furniture
and accessories for kids.
517: Personal Effects
In celebration of the centennial of his birth, Trina O'Hara looks at the
life and enduring legacy of Japanese-American designer Isamu Noguchi.
513: Seeing the light
Trina O'Hara ponders the latest interior design trend and finds the answer
is clear.
505: Lights of fancy
Trina O'Hara checks out the contemporary chandeliers and whimsical lighting
sculptures fast becoming fine art across the city.
501: Natural causes
493: Living rooms
Inspired by the diverse lifestyles of this teeming metropolis, design experts
Kyoko Asakura and Jaume J. Nasple-Baulenas have compiled an intriguing look
inside the city's private homes. Tama Miyake Lung talks to the authors of Tokyo
Houses.
489: Living in the past
Art editor John McGee reveals three Tokyo stores that specialize in finding
the best of what's old in Japanese antiques.
485: Monochrome marvels
Black and white are back in fashion and making their mark in the interior
design scene. Martin Webb reports on how to get the look for less.
481: Cut and paste
Scrapbooking has swept America, where it's big business, and now it's catching
on in Japan. Chris Betros attends a "cropalong."
477: Moss cause
A sprinkling of moss can transform any windowsill into a miniature Zen temple.
Hanna Kite offers some tips for bringing a little tranquility home.
469: Ikebana for idiots
With a plethora of rules and schools, Ikebana can be intimidating, not to
mention time-consuming. But who says busy people have to miss out on this ancient
art form? Georgia Jacobs gives you the basics on no-fuss flower-arrangement.
466: A dyeing breed
Winning fans from New York to Tokyo, designer Akiyoshi Yaezawa is putting
a traditional stamp on modern accessories using a 17th-century hand-dyeing and
painting process. Krista Wilson reports.
457: Party of five
Matt Wilce lays out five luscious looks for New Year.
449: Thought out
Designers create spaces but they also like to inhabit them. SuperDeluxe offers
a place to drink and think for the design community—and of course their
friends
445: Design on Tokyo
A trio of interior design events is on its way to bring style into our Tokyo
living rooms
439: Setting pretty
Matt Wilce lays the table with styles for summer.
435: Tropical haven
Asian furnishings are finding their way to flats across the city
431: Wed white and blue
Treasures of traditional Japanese design, blue and white are the perfect foil
for Tokyo's sweltering summers
427: Have a ball
Who says you need tickets to catch a piece of World Cup action?
423: Collection point
Nishi-Ogikubo's 65 pre-loved furniture stores make up Tokyo's great antique
oasis
419: Flower power
Bring your gloomy flat back to life with seasonal flowers.
415: On the mend
Tokyo's fix-it men can have your furniture back in form
411: Phone home
Panasonic unveils the e-lifestyle of the near future
407: Launch Pad
Sputnik Pad lands in Jingumae
399: Interiors
Retrospective
395:
Interiors
Kitchenware flare
391: Interiors
Ideé is one of Tokyo’s most established interiors stores
387: Inner
sanctum
The days of sitting on the tatami floor are over
383: Life
in style
Tokyo's embraces ultra-modern design
367: Wealthy
workplaces
Put feng shui to work at work
364: Healthy
homes
The ancient Chinese art of feng shui
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Lights of fancy
Trina O'Hara checks out the contemporary
chandeliers and whimsical lighting sculptures fast becoming
fine art across the city.
Picture your dream living room. Is it white,
streamlined, modern and minimal? Do you imagine sleek furniture,
hidden recessed lighting and clutter-free serenity? The minimalist
trend of the last ten years may have made it to the mainstream
interior design store but the fashionistas are onto the next
big thing. Minimalism is dead. You'd better catch up.
To find out what's next, just look up. Leading the
rebellion against lifeless "minimal" interiors
are the lighting designers creating radical, contemporary
chandeliers and unique light sculptures. This new design obsession
places emphasis on creativity over technology, personality
over functionality.
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Lighten up
Creative, playful lighting is displayed throughout all of
Tokyo's fashionable districts, in shop windows, exhibition
spaces and galleries; you just have to look for it. Walk into
the fashionable women's retailer Valentino in Minami-Aoyama
and you will see a lavish cascade of Murano glass high heels,
joined together to form a chandelier. This sculptural delight
is a clever play on the glass slipper, a design for modern
day Cinderellas. Make your way to Agito housewares store in
the new Roppongi Hills Shopping Complex and you will be greeted
by four exquisite orbs of meshed aluminum, each housing naked
globes. Or the light prism made of Japanese paper by Japanese
designers Toshihito Okura, Hiroki Sato and Aiji Inoue on display
in Odaiba for Tokyo Designers Week. These contemporary chandeliers
are definitely not your grandmother's crystal.
You know chandeliers have made a design comeback
when Lara Croft (in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of
Life) fights her attacker in front of a shop window displaying
them. And you know when an innovative lighting design has
reached super star status when it features in Tokyo Designers
Block, Tokyo's major design event showcasing international
and domestic designers.
This is the case of the very large, dramatic chandelier made
of 500 teardrop-shaped, translucent Perspex pieces connected
by wire and displayed in the Spiral Gallery in Aoyama. Australian
design trio Louise Olsen, Stephen Ormandy and Liane Rossler
of Dinosaur Designs push the envelope with contemporary and
imaginative configurations. What we are seeing here are lighting
designers reinventing the concept of a chandelier that appeal
to more youthful consumers.
The shape of the traditional chandelier has
also undergone renovation of late with new products and materials
available to designers. Once an icon of luxury living, chandeliers
are now being made of plastic or other lightweight materials
that allow them to be stretched and manipulated in new ways.
Another exceptional example of the non-traditional chandelier
is the knitted aluminum version hung in the Spiral Gallery
during Designers Block. This one looked like a fisherman's
net stretched to capacity. The only thing this net will catch,
however, is the beautiful white light.
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| A prism made of Japanese
paper hangs in the Container Exhibition during Tokyo Designers
Week |
Mini chandeliers and groups of small shades
have also become very appealing to lighting and interior designers.
The small size of the chandeliers allows them to be used in
spaces where crystal is impractical, while groupings of small
light shades at the same or different heights add to the dramatic
effect. Ascending the escalators to the new Roppongi Hills
Shopping Complex, you can see the most delicate cluster of
cloud-like, contemporary Japanese paper lanterns.
Meanwhile, as new coffee tables get lower and lower, lighting
designs are compensating in length by coming down to meet
us. This is true of the fixtures created by Junzo Yamashita
for in the Container Exhibition in Odaiba during Designers
Block. His innovative design looks rather like thin black
arms reaching from the ceiling to get at us.
High beams
In the land of all things "cool," lighting is
not just about deluxe chandeliers, however. It's also
following the global design movement that's now focusing
on the "feel good" factor. These new lighting
fantasies have to be humorous and free-flowing, with strong
emotional value. Encouraged by the 2003 Milan Furniture Fair,
Teruo Kurosaki, of the Idée interiors store in Minami-Aoyama,
exhibited examples of contemporary lighting that went beyond
the boundaries of new materials and design excellence; they
aimed at fun.
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| Detail of a Perspex chandelier
created by Australia's Dinosaur Designs |
One of the novel designs featured was
a collection of molded-plastic light shades that looked like
upside-down, brightly colored cupcakes dangling from the ceiling.
Loaded with whimsy and imagination, they looked like something
from Alice's wonderland. Another original twist for
Tokyo Designers Block was created by Setsuo Kitaoka for Jutec
and YKK fastening products-yes, the zipper manufacturer.
These lights look like glowing caterpillars chasing their
tails. Displaying one of these lights in your home would surely
elicit grins every time you walk by.
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| A mesh aluminum orb at
the Agito housewares shop in Roppongi Hills |
So what is the message the lighting
designers are sending us? To lighten up? To enjoy life, live
like a child, satisfy your whims, anything goes? It seems
like Japan's big-spending, design-conscious consumers
are proving innovative styling sells and imagination can capture
the wallet. At Tokyo Designers Block, they were snapping up
these contemporary chandeliers and whimsical lighting sculptures
at prices equivalent to an expensive piece of modernist furniture
or an original painting. Could lighting design be the new
fine art?
Photo credit - Trina O'Hara
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